“I know, Hart.”
“I fucked up.” His voice is rough. Sandpaper on rusted pipe. “I let her down so bad. I was supposed to take care of her. Keep ’er safe. I shoulda been there. I shoulda—”
And then the sobs come. Great, huge, racking sobs that rattle his whole body and leave him gasping and choking while I watch. Paralyzed.
I’ve never seen Hart cry. Not one time. Not ever. But especially not like this. I’ve never seen anyone cry like this. Like every sob is scraped up from somewhere deep inside him, made up of equal parts blood and guts.
I ache to put my arms around him. I want to comfort him. Say something. But I know he won’t let me. Sometimes Hart can’t stand to be touched. There’s too much feeling in it. Besides, there’s no easing a hurt that deep. To try to make it better would be an insult. I know because I’ve been walking around for months, slowly bleeding out from a mortal wound of my own.
Eventually, the sobs slow and his shoulders stop shaking. Hart draws a long, ragged breath. And then he mumbles that he’s sorry.
But I can’t be sure if he means for falling apart. Or for kissing me.
I figure it’s probably both.
So I tell him it’s okay.
“Come on,” he says. But he won’t look me in the eye. “I’ll walk you home.”
Hart takes my hand and pulls me up off the seat. Then puts one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder to hold the boat steady for me. He offers me his hand again as I move from the boat to the ladder, and I’m grateful. I still feel really off-center. From the beer.
And the kiss.
When I reach the boardwalk, Hart starts up after me. He’s about halfway up when I hear a sickening crack. The ladder gives out under his weight, and he drops too fast to grab hold of anything. It isn’t far to fall. Maybe three or four feet. But the pontoon has drifted out to the end of its short chain, and Hart lands half on the boat and half in the flooded muck.
Before I can even blink, something huge explodes out of the shallow water right next to the old boat. There’s a violent thrashing. Mud flies in every direction. Something bellows, low and angry. A throaty grunting sound that any good Louisiana girl would know right off.
“Gator!”
The scream doesn’t even have time to leave my mouth before I hear the snap of powerful jaws.
“Shit!” Hart tucks his legs up as he rolls onto the boat and Willie Nelson gets a big ol’ bite of air and rusted metal. “Fuck!”
My heart is pounding, only not down inside my chest where it belongs. It’s moved up into my mouth. I feel it pounding against my teeth.
Willie bellows and thrashes again, and Hart hollers at me to get back from the edge of the boardwalk before I fall in and get eaten. He’s sprawled out on the deck, and he kicks the metal side of the boat three or four times as hard as he can.
Pissed as he is, the banging sends Willie Nelson slinking back into the sludge. I track him with my flashlight and watch as he sinks beneath the surface.
“Hart!” I shout his name, but he’s breathing too hard to talk.
“I’m okay,” he pants. “Just gimme a minute.”
My bones disintegrate, and I sink to my knees on the boardwalk. It’s only a few seconds before Hart somehow manages to haul himself up to sit beside me. He’s wet and muddy and still sucking in great gulps of air. His eyes are wide, and his curls are heavy with swamp water.
“Wood must’ve been rotten,” he says. “Probably scared the daylights out of ol’ Willie Nelson.” He tries to laugh, but it doesn’t quite work. “Me crashing down right on top of him like that.”
I reach across to run my hands over his chest and arms. Just to make sure he’s whole. But Hart flinches away. He pulls the pack of cigarettes out of his shirt pocket with shaking hands, but they’re all soaked. “Goddammit,” he mutters. Then he tosses the ruined pack into the mud before he gets to his feet. “Come on.”
I follow Hart toward the Mystic Rose. We’re about halfway there when I look out at the river and see someone night fishing, right at the edge of the water. Lantern shine bounces off dark red hair. Case is out in that patched-up pirogue of his. What my friends in Arkansas might call a canoe. I hear him whistling to himself. An old Cajun tune I almost know the name of.
I come close to throwing up when I think about that Saint Sebastian medal hidden in my underwear drawer. And I know I can’t keep that secret much longer.
But I can’t tell Hart tonight. He’s already in too many pieces.
It only takes another minute or two to reach the Mystic Rose, but when we stop on the front steps, I look across to the dock.
And there stands Case. Real as you please.
Fishing off the edge. Like he’s been there for hours. And Hart and I both know that was him we passed on the walk here.
Whistling in the dark.
But here he is now, too. Goading us.
Goading Hart. Daring him to say something. Hoping to get something going.
Case doesn’t even turn around to look at us, but I feel Hart bristle beside me. His muscles tighten, and he puffs out air through his nose like an angry bull.
“Don’t.” I lay a hand on his arm, but Hart is already wound up. Ready for a fight. “Please,” I beg. “Not now. Not tonight.”
Hart gives me a long look, then he sighs and leans against a porch post. He glances at his watch. “After midnight,” he says. “Your birthday’s over.”
Evie’s wind chimes ring like funeral bells. Every day there are more of them. There must be close to twenty now. Each one different from the others.
“I need to go to bed,” I say. And Hart nods.
I reach for the front door, but he stops me. “What are you hiding, Greycie?”
I don’t look at him. “Nothing.”
I feel the burn of Elora’s ring in my pocket.
“That’s bullshit,” he says, and the disappointment in his words makes me cringe. “You don’t think I can tell?” He shakes his head in disbelief. “You think I can’t feel it when you sit next to me? When you touch me? Jesus.” He lowers his voice. “You think I can’t taste it when you fuckin’ kiss me like that?”
“Hart—”
“Look, Greycie. I know everyone has secrets. And maybe, when you get right down to it, I don’t wanna know yours any more than you wanna know mine.”
As stupid as it is, it bothers me that Hart has secrets, too. Things he’s hiding from me. Because we never used to be like this. Not back when we were Hart and Elora and Grey. Or Grey and Elora and Hart. Back then, we all told each other everything.
Now that we’re just Grey and Hart—Hart and Grey—it’s all changing. All these hidden things are flowing in like mud to fill up the Elora-shaped space between us.
Hart reaches for my hand, but I pull away. He looks at me and sighs again. “Listen, if there’s something you know . . . something that I need to know . . . I’m countin’ on you to tell me. Straight. Okay? No matter what.”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “Okay.”
But it’s a promise I know I can’t keep. At least not quite yet. Not when all I have are questions.
I watch him walk away for a minute, and as I turn back, I catch a flash of movement. A glimpse of white-blonde hair disappearing around the corner of the little house next door.
Evie.
She’s been playing spy again. I think about calling her over, but I don’t have it in me tonight.
Inside, I find Hart’s soggy birthday card in my back pocket, but I still can’t bring myself to open it. Like he said, my birthday’s over.
I bury the card in my underwear drawer before I dig Elora’s ring out of my pocket and slip it onto my finger.
“Happy seventeenth birthday to us,” I whisper.
But the ringing of wind chimes is the only response.
I hear the cocking of the gun. Just behind
my head. There’s so much noise. Rain and wind and the thumping of my heart. But that single metallic sound echoes louder than any of them.
It’s the flipping of a light switch. Click.
And everything else fades to black.
13
It’s early the next morning when that image of the gun comes to me.
Or more the sound of it.
Click.
I’m in the middle of getting dressed, and that sound is so clear—so real—that I whirl around to look over my shoulder.
Just to be sure.
My head is pounding from last night. Two beers is two more than I’m used to. I feel like total crap. But I can’t stand lying in bed and staring at my ceiling anymore.
Honey has arranged for Bernadette to watch the shop this morning so the two of us can go upriver to Kinter, but I figure she won’t be ready to go for at least an hour.
What I could really use is a good, long run to work out the stiffness in my aching muscles and to clear my jumbled head, but there’s nowhere to run down here. So a walk will have to do.
I swallow some Tylenol and head out through the bookstore. Sweet-N-Low whines and follows at my heels, and I feel bad, because he probably has to pee. But I hear Honey moving around upstairs, so I figure she’ll take him out pretty soon.
When I step out onto the porch to pull on my mud boots, I’m greeted by the tinkling cacophony of Evie’s wind chimes. They’re spread out all along the side of the house now, and she’s standing on a kitchen chair, tying another one up. This newest one is made of metal bits and scraps. A couple keys. A little toy car. A measuring spoon. A set of big hoop earrings.
“Don’t those things keep you awake at night?” I ask her.
“No.” She’s balancing barefoot on the chair—stretched up on her tiptoes, arms extended over her head—tying off a fishing line loop. “They help me sleep.”
Evie’s hair is dull and stringy, and when she glances in my direction, her eyes look a little wild. I guess I’m not the only one who can’t rest easy this summer.
I turn and start down the boardwalk, toward the old pontoon boat. Just out of habit. But then I think about Hart.
That kiss last night.
And what he said to me after. On the front porch.
What are you hiding, Greycie?
I stop and change directions, heading for the back steps instead. Li’l Pass seems like a safer destination.
I think about asking Evie if she wants to come with me, but she’s still standing up on that chair, chewing on her lip and looking for an empty spot to hang the next wind chime.
Besides, I’m kind of hoping maybe someone else will join me. I spin Elora’s ring on my finger. Three times. Like making a wish.
There are a lot of questions I need answers to.
I make my way around the house and down the wooden steps in the back. The ground is saturated from all the rain, and my feet sink deep into the mud. The only cure is to keep moving, so I put one foot in front of the other until the earth finally starts to feel more solid underneath me.
It doesn’t take long to hike back to Li’l Pass, but the throbbing in my head is already subsiding some by the time I kick off my boots and climb up to sit on the old flatbed trailer.
Only eight o’clock, but it must be close to ninety degrees already.
I don’t mind the heat, though. Not today, anyway. Seems like lately I haven’t been able to shake the chill in my bones, despite the stickiness of summer.
I close my eyes and tilt my face up to let the sun reach all my cold places. I soak it up like a lizard on a rock.
Suddenly there’s the low hum of static electricity. The air crackles with it. I feel it vibrating against my skin. When I open my eyes, Zale is standing a few feet away. And I’m not totally surprised, because some part of me was thinking he might show up. But seeing him again still knocks the wind out of me for a second.
I can’t get over the blue of his eyes.
He’s still barefoot and shirtless, and I wonder if he ever wears any damn clothes.
“You look like you could use some company,” he says. But he doesn’t move any closer to me, and I realize he’s waiting for me to say something. To give him permission.
He doesn’t want to spook me.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I could.”
When he smiles and closes the distance between us, my stomach feels funny.
Nervous. But not scared.
“I sure missed dat view,” he says as he climbs up to sit beside me on the trailer. “All those years I was gone.” I follow his gaze across the wide, flat grass, toward the La Cachette boardwalk. It sparkles bright white against the Mississippi River, curving behind it like a serpent.
And I know what he means, because I miss the river so much during the rest of the year up in Little Rock. I get homesick for that always-moving brown water, almost like missing a person.
“How old were you when you left here?” I ask him, and he shrugs.
“Little. But old enough to remember.”
Fog is drifting in at the edges of my brain. Softening the sharp corners. Making everything fuzzy. It feels so good, but I have to hunt for the words I need to ask my next question.
“How come nobody knew about you?”
It’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot since our conversation out on the dock the night before last. Our whole lives, the Summer Children have counted our number as ten. Even after Ember and Orli died, we’ve always said there are ten of us.
And all this time we were really eleven.
Seems like we should have known.
Zale shrugs. “My folks kept to themselves, I guess.” He’s still watching that distant river. “Not much reason to go into town. Never was much for us there. I never even knew about the rest of you, till Elora told me.”
I try to imagine what that would be like. Growing up cut off from other people. Way back in the bayou somewhere.
“Plus I was so young when we left Louisiana,” he adds. “My daddy died, and I grew up in Florida with my mama. Down on the edge of the Everglades.” He turns in my direction and grins. And it makes me a little dizzy. “So dat’s my swamp.”
“Why come back here, then?”
A few seconds slip by before he answers.
“I guess I just thought it was time.”
“Why stay hidden, though?” I’m still trying to make sense of it all. And Zale doesn’t seem to mind the questions. “Why not let people know you’re here?”
He shrugs again. “It’s a hard thing, knowing who to trust.”
“Then why trust me?” I ask him, and he answers without any hesitation.
“Because of the way Elora talked about you.” He smiles at me again. “It kind of felt like I already knew you.”
I feel like I’m at disadvantage, because I don’t know anything about him. I think maybe I want to, though, because his voice is doing more to soothe my aching head than the Tylenol ever could. It has such a pretty sound to it, but there’s something lonesome about it, too.
Like the call of a mourning dove.
“Were you in love with her?” I ask.
“I definitely was,” he says. “You were, too. Weren’t you?”
I blush, because you couldn’t know Elora and not be in love with her.
“Was she in love with you?” I ask. I need to know if he’s the one who made Case jealous enough to kill her.
But he shakes his head.
“We weren’t lovers. It wasn’t like dat between us.” There’s that familiar music in his voice again. Just a few notes of an old Cajun melody that I know as well as I know my own heartbeat. “We saved each other is all.”
I don’t understand what he means.
�
�I was out fishin’ one night back in January. Just at the edge of the river. Middle of the night. Nobody awake. And my line got all tangled, so I bent down to sort it out, and when I looked up again, there was this girl standin’ up there on the dock. Right where we were standin’ the other night.”
“Elora.”
I whisper her name like an incantation, and the long grass whispers it back.
“Full moon,” he says.
A rougarou moon.
“And I could see her plain. The kind of beautiful that steals the breath right out your chest. Couldn’t take my eyes off ’er. She was standin’ dere right on the edge.”
“The river was calling her,” I say, and Zale nods.
“Only I didn’t know dat then. So I watched her for a minute. And then she went over.”
I feel that fog at the edges of my brain, and I try to push it back.
“What do you mean, went over?”
“She went over the edge. Into the water.”
I gasp out loud, and my stomach clenches like a fist. It’s a fifteen-foot drop, at least, from the dock to the dark, churning river below.
Deep and fast-moving and treacherous.
“You saved her life that night.”
He shrugs, like it’s no big deal. “When I fished her out of the river dat first time, she cussed me up one side and down the other. Wouldn’t even tell me her name. But I still came back the next night, just in case. And we did the whole thing all over again. And again. And again. And again. I must’ve saved her a dozen times. A dozen different nights.”
“She wanted to die that bad?” I can’t stand to think of Elora like that.
Hopeless.
“No.” Zale shakes his head, and his eyes flash extra bright. “It was just the river she needed. That letting go. So I kept dragging her into the boat. I’d sit out dere in the dark and wait for the splash. Like I was a deep-sea fisherman and her some kind of Mississippi mermaid.”
“Mississippi mermaid.” I like the way the words feel in my mouth, but they sound better in Zale’s ocean-deep voice. Each m is a wave against the sand.
Dark and Shallow Lies Page 12